[ubuntu-uk] Mythubuntu: what harware?

[LeeGroups]

>> I'm seeing virgin media tv ads about the tivo box.
>>
>> Is this stuff that mythubuntu can do?
>> If so what is the hardware any of you would recomend?
>
> I understand the Tivo box has some sort of inteligence in it in that 
> it can suggest TV programs and what not.  Not to mention the Virgin 
> Tivo box supports HD cable programming :-)
>
> But from what I've read about MythTV it also seems very powerful if 
> you spend the time tweaking it.
>
> The last time I was reading up about it, if you wanted to do HDTV 
> playback it was recommended that you had an NVidia graphics card 
> (something like a Geforce 8400 or higher or a GeForce 210 or higher) 
> which can offload the HD video decoding to the graphics card so you 
> can have a lower spec machine.
>
> I believe if you want just Freeview then an Atom board with an Ion 
> chipset with maybe 2GB Ram and a big hard drive and some USB Freeview 
> sticks would suffice.
>
> I guess really to advise what hardware you'd need depends on what you 
> want to do.  If you wanted to you could maybe have a powerful backend 
> with a few tuner cards (maybe a couple of DVB-S2 Satellite tuners and 
> some Freeview tuners) for free to air channels and then multiple front 
> ends to play all back on.
>
> Personally I am tempted to get one of these... 
> http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253305
>
> It's a low power dual core Athlon II server with 1GB Ram and a 250GB 
> hard drive.  It's small and has space for 4 drives and up to 8GB Ram. 
> It also has a £100 cashback offer until the end of this month.
>
> Originally I was thinking of getting one to replace my P4 server in 
> the loft with something lower power and quieter but after some 
> thought, if I stick a Geforce 210 in there I can also use it for 
> MythTV as well (although due to the limited internal slots, I'd have 
> to use USB tuners), and finding a USB sound card with SPDIF output 
> which is compatible with Ubuntu seems to be a bit of a challenge.
>
> Rob
>
Rob,

I think you're getting too hung up big graphics cards and big processors 
and loads of drives.... :)
I've run Myth on that kind of hardware and while it works, it'll cost 
you a fortune in just electricity... remember ever watt the machine uses 
will cost you over £1/year... my old Myth box was 220w according to the 
meter, costing over £230/year in electric alone... never mind the cost 
of the machine...

While Myth can do the whole client/server thing (and it's all very 
clever), it's a bit overkill for most people, especially since most TV's 
have the antenna connections right next to them, it seems to make sense 
to put a combined frontend/backend box under the TV, just like a 
Tivo/Sky/Cable box.

My new (and by new I mean 15 months old) Myth box is a (now 
discontinued) bottom of the range (even came with Linpus Linux) Acer 
Revo 3600 (newer versions are available now). Single core 1.6GHz Atom 
processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB laptop hard drive, onboard Nvidia ION graphics 
(with HDMI out), cost £165 new. Add one MCE remote (off Ebay£15) and one 
Hauppauge WinTV NOVA-TD dual Freeview USB tuner (Amazon £50). It equals 
a really sweet setup!

My original big box setup used KnoppMyth (though to be fair this was 
four years ago) and took about month (several hours a night) to set 
everything up with hours of googling, a complete nightmare. When it was 
finished it worked fine, except that due to all the tweaking to get all 
that mix of hardware/software to play nice, I was stuck because I was 
too scared to upgrade for fear of breaking something...

For the new box I used Mythbuntu. It took less than 30 mins, most of 
which was drinking tea waiting for it to install. Everything worked out 
of the box! The only issue that I had was that sound didn't work over 
the HDMI lead, a quick google pointed me at the sound app, where I had 
to activate a setting to do digital sound.  Result!  About a year later 
(at the time of the local digital switchover) I had glitch when the old 
USB tuner stopped working (still not sure why), so I bought the WinTV 
and it's been absolutely fine since.

The MythTV setup lets you record two programmes at once (although within 
limits it can record up to six at once quiet happily) while watching a 
recording, it does all the season pass/series link stuff, look out for 
programmes with favourite actors/directors/etc, it let's you watch the 
recordings on a laptop elsewhere in the house if the kids are watching 
TV, has a nice web interface for setting up recordings (can be used over 
the internet with the right router setting), the EPG data is 
continuously downloaded over the air - and programmes are automatically 
rescheduled if needed, it can also stream video from other servers/PCs 
(with minor fiddling) onto the TV, let's you keep/save TV programmes 
(pull them over to a laptop and burn to DVD),  and being so tiny it 
attaches (with a homemade wooden bracket) to the back of the LCD TV 
keeping it all looking nice and tidy!

And as a bonus it only uses 24W... saving £200/year in electric from the 
old box, cheaper to run than a Sky box and no monthly bills from Sky... 
:) Result!

Lee

PS. Props to the MythBuntu guys if they're listening!